Sigh. I thank you for calling attention to this... disease of the slash genre. A lot of the concepts (I hesitate to call them plot devices) you mention just weird me out. And I see them used over and over - and over - again.
Most of the time it isn't even really the clichés' presence that bothers me, rather the immaturity authors choose to handle them with. It's the reason I began to write in the first place - I was so fed up with reading that I escaped into the world of my own stories instead. That's not to say I don't include some overused details myself, but I stray clear of the more horrid stuff (Uke and seme? Eyeliner and barrettes? Dom and sub? Seriously - WTF?), and like to think that what I do include is not cliché for the sake of cliché.
Cheers!

It really touched upon a LOT of my pet peeves when reading Slash. I am new to the genre, and while I have read a lot of quality fiction, some of the utter crap I've had to wade through is ridiculous.

The stereotypical high school characters, the skinny angsty boys who all adore Pete Wentz (really? I don't know if I have ever knowingly heard his music), the hair straighteners, eyeliner, cutting, waist length hair, etc, what? But also, let us not forget all of the prostitutes and hustlers who magically move into their friends homes and live there, while non existent parents pay the bills.

I also find it disturbing that either girls are tiny shrieking spider monkeys who "glomp" (what does that mean?) all over our fair heroes as they try so hard to make out in the cafeteria, or they are the raging Catholic bitches out to cleanse the world from helpless gay boys.

I could also do without reading the terms "uke" and "seme" ever again. I actually read something recently where one boy "pouted a perfect uke pout", or something like that. My first thought was, "Really? Whats a uke pout?" I can't wrap my brain around sentences like those.

The moral of the story for me is to stay away from anything that has "high school" in the description.

Look, I wrote my own essay! I am sorry. But I had a lot of "hell, yeah!" moments while reading your essay and I thank you for articulating what so many of us are thinking.

Thank you for pointing out so many of the things that bother me about the stories on fp. Of course, we're all guilty, myself included. It is one of the consequences of posting to an unregulated site. There's a lot of junk to wade through, but then every now and then there's a gem that makes it all worth it. I like to hope that all the girlphobic, seme/uke-obsessed, make-upgay, mental-illnesses-are-cool writers will grow out of it, as most of them seem to still be in high school. I mean, I know the things I wrote in high school and...let's just say I don't want to talk about it. This is turning out to be not so much a review as a response. Sorry. Anyway, thanks for posting this. Especially the section on Person and POV, which was illuminating for someone who is mostly self-taught, writing-wise.

I really like the way you put all your frustrations into words. 70% of my time reading slash on fictionpress, I end up feeling irritated. And I always wonder: am I the only one who doesn't like these things? Because they appear one after another in stories that started up perfectly adorably but end in major disappointment (on my side). And people review saying: Waah this was sooooo good! While I think nu-uh and mourn over the author's spilt talent. I'm a crappy writer myself so I really admire the beautiful and fluent writing only a native speaker can pull off. But I can't forgive those authors for writing superficial crap. A small part of me feels betrayed every time, while the other part just shrugs it off. 'Cause luckily finding something that does charm me is the most amazing feeling ever! (you do, btw. Prospect Road left me dreaming for a long time so, uh, thank you...) But your 'explaining it all' will help me to keep my guard up and remember the initial reason I put my embarrassing stories on fictionpress. Because I like them, I like my characters and I want to see them develop throughout the story. Yeah!

Thank you so much for addressing the girlphobia thing. It drives me so crazy when girls write these stories essentially vilifying their own kind. Every girl in the story is either a one-dimensional stereotypical "catty b*tch" or she's always a best-friend version of the manic pixie dream girl. Seriously, they always have the same freakin personality. (if you don't know what I'm referring to, read this: /Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl).

It makes me so sad to see girls discounting themselves like that... It's fine to have a gay boy story fetish (which I admittedly have as well, just look at my monstronsity of a favorites list) but that doesn't mean that I find girls icky or have any self-loathing about being female, which apparently a lot of slash writers do. Bah.

I think you've clarified a few things in my mind about writing from certain view points- I am actually most comfortable first person present but I've been trying third person past to see if it gives me more freedom and not be so deep in a character's POV, and NOW I realise I've been writing what you call tight third and it isn't anymore freeing, and I can suddenly see why- so thank you! (I feel slightly stupid;P)

The whole point of view discussion is fascinating but also daunting- I mean there are so many ways to get it right and to get it wrong. I think Perec is the one writer I've read that pulls off weird POV's with any continuity and grace, but I'm on a mission to find more.

Before anything else I would like to say that I immensely enjoyed 'The Raw and the Cooked', enjoyed it quite a few times too (this review is long overdue so I just had to say it).

I found your explanation entertaining and informative. English is a third language for me but there was a time when I wanted to write stories too the problem was/is my grammar is not up to par and what I write seem to always sound wrong. As I later found out too I don't really know what to write, I just have these ideas that feels and sound so good inside my head but doesn't translate quite right on writing. Even just writing and reading these review is painful it seems boorish and unrelated to me but what I really want to say is that your writings move me that I just have to let you know.

yay! at last someone goes into an in-depth exploration of POV, instead of doing a slapdash grammar lesson that we all already slept through in high school. On the question of first person plural, the best [and only example I know] is Jeffrey Eugenides with The Virgin Suicides. The narrators only talk in the plural, but reference various boys they know, and it's understood that these boys are included in their number... "We heard Frankie the Brain brag about the telescope" but implies that Frankie is already one of the "we." It's a neater trick than having an anonymous "we" talking exclusively of other people, but this way, Eugenides just compounds the question of the narrator, and the narrator's unreliability.

I find myself agreeing with most of your points in this. I just have two things to point out, and this is only what I can remember.

At the beginning of a paragraph (and here I shall be really annoying and not tell you which, because I've forgotten it) you mean 'I' but wrote 'In'. And where you wrote 'It was aggravating, and worse', your use of the word 'aggravating' is grammatically incorrect. 'Aggravating' means 'increasing hte gravity of [a situation]' and thus you have used it when you meant 'Irritating' or 'annoying'.

You know, the next time someone asks me to beta, I think I'm going to send them the link to this first. You're touching on so many of the problem points I see time and time again. I've given up on more than a few stories out of boredom because their authors insisted on basically writing every scene twice because of the romance alternating POV gimmick. And thank you especially for the bit about song lyrics; I've been trying to come up with a tactful way to let people know that opening their stories with lyrics leaves a bad impression.

I do have a question about your POV essay: Would you consider a story where each chapter is in close third person POV, but the POV character changes chapter-to-chapter to be head-hopping omniscient? I've always heard that it's nigh on impossible to write good omniscient third, but I always thought that only referred to a style where the head-hopping occurs WITHIN a scene.

In any case, it's always refreshing to find other grown-ups here who enjoy slash. Looking forward to checking out some of your sci-fi work!